WARNING! It has come to my attention that there is a somewhat popular method being used in the church called, Journaling. Despite their driving need to assure you journaling is not the same as automatic writing, it IS EXACTLY the same as the New Age practice of automatic writing, and you will most certainly be opening the doors to demons! As a matter of fact, if you have succeeded at the occult practice of automatic writing (renamed: journaling) like you are suppose to, without doubt you now have your own personal evil spirit guide! Journaling, or automatic writing is how the book, Jesus Calling was written. It is DANGEROUS. Do NOT practice it!! Flee! - Laura Neubert-Moore I was a fairly new believer in Jesus Christ. We were attending a charismatic church that held an ongoing prayer vigil. Off to the side of the sanctuary was a prayer chapel where we were encouraged to dedicate an hour each week. I happily settled on an early Saturday morning time for prayer. The first time I entered the cool, quiet, dimly lit chapel, I felt an overwhelming sense of peace and serenity. The woman who was finishing up her prayer time slowly lifted her head and rose to greet me with a loving embrace. As I took her place in the short pew, she placed a spiral notebook in front of me. It was filled with page after page of messages from God. She explained that everyone who went into the chapel was to sit still, and wait, and listen to the Lord speak to us. We were then to record what he said. I scanned the messages and they all seemed encouraging, edifying, consoling and promising. Many paragraphs were filled with uplifting phrases that sounded biblical. Recognizing this technique, I was a bit startled. I asked her nervously, Isnt this the same as automatic writing? Not at all! she rushed to assure me. She said that as a new believer I could practice this same meditative art, but this time it would be the Holy Spirit who would talk to me - talk through me - and that in this way He would speak words to others in the church. Since she was an older woman in the Lord and seemed to have much faith, I took her word for it and sat down to meditate and listen to Jesus. Pretty soon words came into my mind. They were shocking! The message I heard was not encouraging at all! It didnt match anything else anyone had written down. Instead the message I received was pure Scripture: Repent! it said over and over again, based on various verses from Scripture about repentance. I struggled with what to do. Should I tear up what I had just recorded? But I noticed that it was Scripture, so I finally decided to just leave it there on the page. I walked out of the chapel into the chilly morning air a bit disconcerted. What had just happened? Hadnt I prayed and asked Jesus for a message? Why didnt my message match the other beautiful and positive words that were on the pages of that notebook? I wondered if anyone else in the church ever got such negative messages. I wondered if the message was real. Was Jesus really calling the people in the church to repent? Was there indeed sin in peoples lives? All week long I was troubled. Maybe it had just been a word meant for me. I examined my own life over and over again and repented of every single thing that I could think to confess. I went back the following Saturday morning and expectantly awaited again. This time when I closed my eyes to pray, I heard a new word. It said: Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? These were verses from Isaiah 58:6-7. Again I was upset. Why were the words I received so different from the others? The church had just embarked on a fasting program and great victory in Jesus had been promised. Many hoped that strongholds in their life would be broken so that they could finally become wealthy. Nobody was talking about giving to the poor. They were only believing to get rich themselves. Was this why this verse came to my mind? I hesitantly wrote it down in the book. For the next few months I went back to the prayer chapel every Saturday morning where I consistently heard similar messages based on Bible verses that spoke about the need to repent. I was becoming very confused. One day soon after this another older woman in the church phoned me. She was becoming quite concerned. Dave Hunt and T.A. McMahon had just issued their groundbreaking book The Seduction of Christianity and she recognized that our church was getting involved with all sorts of spiritual practices that Hunt was warning about. Then one Sunday morning service the assistant minister asked us to close our eyes and envision Jesus taking us on a journey to see new spiritual insights and hear new words. Guided imagery. Visualization. Centering. The same sorts of things I had done as a hippie. Only now we were being told that it was okay because it was Jesus leading us. This churchs leaders soon began to formally teach that in order to contact Jesus we needed to learn to practice these meditative arts. We were told that some members were reaching a higher, more elite form of spirituality by approaching Jesus through these methods. But what about our simple humble prayers and supplications? What about His shed blood on the Cross? The new way to reach Jesus was through our own spiritual journeys and these mystical endeavors. It promised an easier way. Nobody had to change anything about their lives, or repent of any of their evil deeds. The Gospel of Redemption was missing from these teachings. And I noticed that it was all very selfish. Centering always seems to result in self-centeredness. Shortly after this episode, a group of us left the church.[5] We formed a Bible study, and like the Bereans we began to study the Word to learn more about what had just happened to us. I continued researching the New Age movement, especially to understand more clearly the type of eastern mysticism that I had become entangled in as a teenager. One day I received a phone call from a man identifying himself as Warren Smith. He said he had been put in touch with me by a mutual friend. Warren told me that he was a former New Ager who had been born again. He had just spent the past few years of his life traveling the country to spread the word about a book he wrote, his testimony called The Light That Was Dark.[6] I immediately understood his book title - I had also experienced the light that turned out to be dark! Warren told me that he was becoming concerned. Almost unbelievably he was seeing these same New Age practices coming into the church. I shared a few of my prior experiences with him. We had much in common, including our mutual fears that leaders in the evangelical church were starting to take the old familiar (to us) New Age mystical concepts and dress them up in new theological garb. These leaders were promising deeper levels of new spiritual truths by performing these same old mystical methods. Warren and I both knew it to be a spiritual fraud. We worried it would only only lead people into darkness and deception. During the next few decades I would dedicate much time to research these New Age practices as they were coming into the church. In 2002 my husband and I helped Warren Smith publish Reinventing Jesus Christ: The New Gospel. In this book Smith explained how New Age leaders were hearing a voice that claimed to be either Jesus or God. This voice, as it was channeled through these New Age leaders, sounded just like automatic writing! Authors such as Neale Donald Walsch, Helen Schucman and Barbara Marx Hubbard published the channeled writings of their God and their Jesus. He was giving a different gospel message, one that promised peace and prosperity on earth. Smith summarized these new teachings: The new gospel teaches that when humanity collectively accepts and experiences itself as being a part of Christ and a part of God, we not only save ourselves, we save our world. The Christ of the new gospel warns that the hour is late. Peace must come. He will help. He has a plan. But everyone must play their part.[7] When we were new believers both Warren and I never dreamed that these same old teachings would come into the evangelical church world and be believed! But they did. And they came in via the same old mystical methods we had once learned from the occult. If one becomes dependent on a subjective presence rather than the objective Holy Bible, deception is inevitable.[12] For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect. (Mark 13:22) - By Sarah H. Leslie
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 02:01:59 +0000
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